The phone order taker seemed instructed to state the following after each item was requested:

“And then?”

It was done in a sing-song fashion, abbreviating each item we ordered with a rhythm, so the person placing the order followed it like trailing a leaf down a river’s current.

Husband: “Two small Hot and Sour soups”.

Order Taker: “And T-H-E-N?”

Husband: “One large Mo-shoo pork”.

Order Taker: “And T-H-E-N?”

The ebb and flow continued until you were caught with nothing left to order. You wanted to, felt compelled to keep her singing her “And  T-H-E-N?” But for the sake of prudence (gastronomical and economical) you simply had to stop. But how to stop? She did not seem to understand: “That’s all” or “Nothing more”.

So my husband cleverly replied to her with her own words:

“No ‘And Then’.”

Comprehension reached. Order completed. Song over.

Two decades later we still joke when we (much less frequently) order Chinese takeout and have added the routine to indicate when “enough is enough”. For example, when it’s time to leave a party, when one of us is simply too tired to play another set of tennis or after too much vacation sightseeing.

“No ‘And Then’” came to me recently when I was feeling sorry for myself because so many people I knew had died so closely together.

Five dead in 20 months. Five wakes. Five funerals. Three funeral luncheons. Ninety-six mushroom burgers, 73 pints of ice cream, 87 cannolis, and 241 sleepless nights.

I had some idea I was losing my grandmother. Her health deteriorated over two years, starting at age 88. She waned before our eyes slowly the way a candle does at the beginning of a dinner when you wonder whether it will drip ruinous wax all over the table by the time dessert is served, and then rapidly are astonished that you can barely distinguish the faces across the table by the meager flame’s flicker.

Before she became too ill, we spoke daily of cooking, family and animals—particularly our cats; but also she took pleasure in my describing (during the final spring before her life became a round trip between hospitals and nursing homes), the progress of a family of Canadian geese and their offspring as they developed from tufts of down to awkward, green gangly teen-geese to when their parents were finally alone.

About 15 months after she died I was able to remember her without longing for all the little things I missed. I was able to remember the things about her which drove me crazy, our disagreements; she finally lost sainthood and became a human again. A human I lost, but loved, and I accepted it. I deleted her phone number from my cell phone.

Then my father was killed in a car accident.

We got along well enough, but were never very close until after my grandmother died and he became the new “phone” version of her. Two or three times a week we prattled on about what we had each cooked for dinner, our cats’ antics, squirrel raids on the meager holes in their attic, my brother’s college escapades, my fears about my husband’s job and health, and complaints about my commute.

Then one Sunday morning he was gone. There was no complete resolution to the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of his accident. Car crashed into a tree. Man dead. No closure like I had seen people get on TV.

It’s funny what you miss about people after they die. I realized he would never make my favorite ginger ale and cranberry drink or my husband’s favorite salad. There would be no more check-ins about our cats. He would never repeat the details of my brother’s hockey games. We would no longer squabble over politics.  There were simply no more conversations left.

No “And Then”.

Three months later, my Aunt Claire died. We morbidly ‘joked’ with my cousins that we “had to stop meeting like this!”.  She had been sick for so long that, while losing someone like her—who took everyone’s side in an argument and had a laugh that wrapped around you like a whip—it was understood her death was a release from suffering, and we all truly meant it.

Wakes are like weddings without the presents.

One develops a wake repertoire. After a while, it’s a well-oiled show: the handshaking, the “so sorry for your loss”, “what a terrible shock” (to be replaced with “even though s/he was so sick, it’s still a shock, a terrible loss”, as appropriate), “people are so thoughtful at times like this” (to be replaced with “forget what s/he said, people say the dumbest things at times like these”, as appropriate), “who sent those lovely flowers” (the perfect subject-changer), greeting someone as if you’ve known them your whole life only to turn to your closest relative and ask, “who the heck was that?”.

Two and a half months later, my Uncle Tony (Aunt Claire’s husband) died the day he was to be released from the hospital. His children sobbed with such longing that even though I was numb from the previous deaths, I had to walk away because their yearning was like a vacuum.

Three weeks later, the mother of my dearest friend died from a several-year battle with a Parkinson’s like degenerative disease. The months of prayer to relieve her from her pain were followed in the weeks after her funeral with a longing for her mother that one only sees in a ravenous child.

Over the past two years I was consumed with these deaths. I have pitied myself, numbed myself to it (mostly with food), vetted anger at helpless victims (my apologies to most people commuting on the number 5 train downtown), trivialized the other events taking place in my friends’ lives (job promotions, divorce, unemployment, moving).

I allowed myself to gorge on the emotion of loss.

Then one day I felt fat. Not just the weight accumulated from the self-destructive eating-as-comfort, but also bloated with a loathing of what I had become emotionally and mentally. I gave in to every feeling, every craving. I had become apathetic, narcissistic, and pessimistic simply through losses that I refused to accept.

No matter how much you long for the people in your life to go on, to keep being there in a comforting way that you need them, at some point they have to go (it would be a pretty crowded and gross planet if we didn’t). You simply cannot fill yourself up with them any more than you can pig out on an endless menu of Chinese take out.

At some point all things must come to an end. But if you keep holding on to someone’s loss then you are not leaving space for something you may gain. Don’t get so caught up in what isn’t there that you leave no room for what could be next.

Zip, zilch, zero, or “l’oeuf” as the French would say.

Actually the French haven’t called “nothing” a “l’oeuf”, or “egg”, since the origins of scoring in tennis. And they still don’t; only American tennis refers to zero as “Love” (sounds like l’oeuf”) when scoring a game, and it is also said to come from the English phrase “neither for love nor for money”, indicating nothing.

Tennis scoring always seemed confusing. And did not seem important as long as I could ask someone, who knew how scoring worked, which player was winning.

When I started to play for points was when I memorized scoring and learned by heart the pain of “love”. And, for the first year, the reality of “Love – 40” or “40 – Love”, depending on who was serving first (me having “Love”, or “nothing”, my opponent having “40”, a win).

But I have never felt heartbroken over tennis. In fact, I never feel more powerful than when I am holding 10.3 ounces of German engineering in my hands.

When I pick up my tennis racquet, I am reminded of how often I tried to learn the game, how frequently the game convinced me I had the hand eye coordination of a naked mole rat, how easily I quit trying time and again. I am also reminded that it was a few years ago when the sport gave me another chance, I learned the art of sticking with something (and a few other valuable life lessons), and wound up finding one of the greatest loves of my life.

Tennis found me at a low point: I was jobless, in a strange town with no friends or family, my husband working long days with an hour-and-half commute at each end. I was lonely and worried that everything was always going to be horrible going forward. My confidence was shot and by not living in my pedestrial-oriented NYC—where you could walk for hours and watch people, losing yourself in the sights, sounds, and smells (especially the smells)—I was driving everywhere in a suburb, for even the most mundane chores such as mailing a letter, and it began to show in my waistline.

So one morning, instead of driving home from the dry cleaners and losing myself in an endless loop of LifeTime television, I drove into the Tennis Club I passed so often, and signed up for a summer-long ladies clinic.

I had ventured into the world of ‘trying’ tennis many times: as a teenager, in my twenties, in private lessons, one-on-ones with my husband who has a couple of decades of experience at the sport. None of it ever stuck, and tennis fell in with the times I tried skateboarding,  rollerblading, and skiing—better to observe than participate.

This time, this desperate, fearful, stone’s throw away from turning 40 time, I threw myself into tennis as one clings to a life preserver as waves crash over your head. I wanted something to work, to meet people, to be good at something.

Why it worked is quite simple: I participated in my tennis class in the opposite way I had done everything else before. I paid complete attention to the teacher, not doubting a word and followed his instructions implicitly. I chatted up every other classmate as if they were the most important person there (and they were). I did not show off or pretend to know more than I did. I pushed myself past the physical “issues”: sweat slipping down my forehead and stinging my eyes, cramps stabbing at my calves, forcing down the nausea that rose up as I tried to run to the ball faster, light-headedness from not stopping to drink water because you did not want the others to know you needed it, and gasping for breath after each swing and hit at the ball.

Tennis showed me a physical side to myself that no other activity I had pursued before—running, swimming, dance, horseback riding, bicycling—ever did. I wasn’t just “fit”, I was truly healthy, and my body wasn’t just “in shape” it looked like something I had seen but never believed would wear: athletic.

I’d like to say I got good at tennis that first summer.

What I did get good at was learning to humble myself for the things that matter in my life. Tennis became one of those things even though I was still pretty lousy at it. I definitely was able to hit the ball and run faster and learned different strokes and techniques.  But it was clear I needed more than a summer to play tennis with any skill and with the finesse it deserved.

I’d like to say I threw myself into tennis after that summer, an absolute devotee, with lessons and video study and all my heart and head.

What did happen is that we moved back to New York City, I got a job and was too busy to play  tennis.

But a wonderful thing happened: I became pretty miserable again. I was surprised that I couldn’t simply feel delighted and content with a job and being back in my hometown. And that’s when I saw the sign: Tennis Clinic.

One of the blessings of tennis is that it demands your complete attention. It takes you out of your head. You simply must focus on the ball and get into each stroke or you will play a horrible game. Tennis requires your whole body, and some calculation, but not really anything from your brain. I found it to be a sweet escape from my thinking, a release from wondering why, as I was approaching 40 (an age where at least television and movies show everyone pretty much has their life in order), I had no career to speak of, I was estranged from my family, had no children, no passions.  Tennis said, “Just stay here now and play” and that was exactly what I needed.

So without thinking, I signed up for the first available clinic. Then signed up for two more, playing three nights a week. I convinced my husband to sign up too. We subscribed to the tennis channel, read tennis magazines and talked serves and volleys at every opportunity.

I was really quite bad at tennis for most of the clinics. I still usually missed the ball completely. I often tripped over anything possible: the ball, my own feet. I even managed to lose hold of the racquet on a few occasions and throw it across the court while attempting to hit the ball.

What I never did was walk off the court, or allow my embarrassment to deter me from continuing.

Eventually I got decent enough that I got moved into the advanced group, others in my class complimented my progress, and my husband and I were able to play together. (Another gift from tennis was finding another thing to share and love with my spouse and to play together has added a magnificent dimension to our marriage.) After a few vacations to the Mecca of tennis (Florida), I got good enough to play for points, and learned to keep score. I have actually won a few games. Never a match. And still end most of my games with “Love” (okay “zero” but “love” does sound better, maybe the French were onto something).

What I improved on this time around was that I took notes (I’m a great forgetter) and began to treat tennis the way I would any relationship that matters. I realized I had to spend time with it and keep at it: there could be no breaks of a week or more, I had to play no matter how busy I believed I was. I would not become complacent or take the game or my improvement for granted. I approach each game by trying to be a little better than the last time, give it more than the time before.

Some of the notes I took about tennis have applied greatly to my life outside of tennis:

• Keep your eye on the ball: focus on the task at hand, not the one or dozens of other things that are coming your way. Yes, after you hit the ball you need to see what your opponent will do, but you only get one moment to focus on the ball you have to hit, so don’t lose sight of it.

• Keep your head down: if you keep looking up to see what your opponent is doing or what is happening outside the court or where the ball might land, you will change your posture and the ball will fly out of your control (usually pop up and out); so by trying to look ahead and project or predict more than what is at hand (once again, the thing you are supposed to focus on) you lose perspective and miss the obvious thing right in front of your face.

• When all is not going well, slow down: A natural response to adversity is to use adrenaline and plow forth. But the opposite is only effective. If you’ve ever seen a chicken with it’s head cut off, you’d know why speeding up is a bad idea. When I mis-hit in tennis I usually hit harder and faster, run more and attack more. And the result is: I suck more. I only succeed in becoming a faster version of me who is mis-hitting and playing poorly. When I break down the game to slower, more deliberate actions: focus on the hit, watch my feet and how I am standing, watch where the ball is going, I get better and only then can I afford to get back into to a faster pace.

• Breathe (and loudly if you must): One instructor told me that I was holding my breath while hitting the ball and may be partly why I was running out of steam so soon. He asked me to try taking in a breath as my opponent was hitting the ball to me, and grunting a breath out as I hit the ball. (according to a recent study, grunters often defeat their opponents, though this is more likely due to how distracting this is to their opponents). The funny thing is that while you are breathing and grunting you cannot think or worry.

• Have a mantra: Focusing on a brightly-colored ball may seem easy, but as the game wears on, your brain wants to go to its happy place and lie down. Let’s face it, who hasn’t felt this after a long meeting at work, dinner with the in-laws, etc.? This is perfectly normal and exactly how I would start a game well but then lose focus—no matter how I stared down that fuzzy yellow ball—and play lousy even though I wasn’t physically tired. One instructor told me to come up with something I could repeat to myself (to my brain) that would keep me engaged, on track. He suggested I ‘talk through the ball’, as in: hit, bounce, swing. When I get fuzzy brained during play, I whip this mantra out and it engages my head so my body can play the game.

• Smile: your brain is essentially stupid. It doesn’t know that you are playing badly until you let it know by getting angry when you miss and sulking when you lose. Plaster a smile on your face and your brain will think all is okay, and eventually…all will be okay. You may not win, but your brain doesn’t need to know that, it just wants to have fun, which is why you are playing a game, which brings me to the final lesson:

• Don’t take the game (yourself) too seriously: It is a game. You play it because you want to not be at the PTA meeting, in front of the TV, cooking for eight. If you are playing badly, then learn what went wrong and try and correct it the next time. If you lose, laugh because you were challenged, tried hard and still lost but you didn’t lose at life, just a game—a very safe place to lose.

The most amazing thing about my tennis game is that I have not quit, never abandoned it for something easier or more interesting or of-the-moment. I have thrown tantrums, dashed my racquet to the ground, stormed off, yelled at the ball, cursed and hit myself in the head with my racquet, spewed hateful comments under my breath at my instructors, and have thought the nastiest things upon hearing helpful suggestions from husband across the court. But I have not ever thought of stopping playing tennis.

It has been one of least-rewarding things I have stuck with (at least in terms of success or fame): I don’t entertain the idea of going pro or even playing on an amateur team or club, and I will never earn money from it (though I did win a backpack the USTA Florida’s Facebook page for writing about the importance of tennis in my life).

And yet, aside from my marriage, tennis is one of the most rewarding relationships and saving graces of my life. Tennis demands so much and only rewards me with fun and fitness, which seem so undervalued in a time when people have tantrums because their local Walmart closed. But even when I start and frequently finish a game scoreless, I still feel more satisfied than any pat on the back I received at work or any compliment from a relative. So you start the game with nothing (Love) and sometimes end the game with nothing (Love); but I have learned that at least if I try and face the challenge, I still manage to have a good time.

For me, a better way to think about tennis (and life), regardless of how many or few points I score, or how many successes or failures I count, is not “Love means nothing”, but rather: “Everything begins with Love”.

In my (our) defense, it wasn’t so kind nor gentle when it was passed on to me, which made me think that in a way, every generation is a person in this great relay-race of life: We each pass on the responsibility of carrying on the world, and of passing it on to the next generation. But in any relay race, it is not about just “passing the baton”, but rather the burden of doing your best on your own leg of the run so that the whole team can benefit from your efforts.

And regardless of whether my elders did a better job of it than me or not, is not the point—in fact, passing the blame is part of the problem. So as part of a graduation present to my brother, I would like to offer an apology and some advice (who has not been passed advice by an eager relative upon graduating, getting married, having a child?).

First, I am sorry that you are not graduating into a job market that has wonderful opportunities waiting for you or your friends. When I graduated (sometime in the Mesozoic Era), I was competing with college grads for jobs as a supermarket checker (and turned down!). Since then I have seen many ‘job markets’ and trust me, it gets better.

And while am at it here’s the rest over which I think the Class of 2010 could sue for damages: the fact that we are even debating global warming; 24-hour news channels; greed being equated with success; George W. Bush; the fact that you still cannot open a loaf of bread without destroying all that tightly-sealed outer plastic; the U.S. being engaged in some form of war since 1990; those “inspiration-a-day” calendars; the national deficit; George W. Bush (two terms earns a double-mention); and “Nutritional Facts’ labels on everything you eat!

Hmmm…how to cope with all this? Here are some suggestions I have for the college graduates who are reaching for the sloppy batons we pass them, running towards adulthood: (Note that I have borrowed some of the ‘guidance’ from a commencement speech made by Alan Alda, still relevant after 30 years.)

First, don’t be scared. You’re being flung into a world that’s running about as smoothly as a car with square wheels. It’s OK to be uncertain. I’m uncertain, too. In a world like this, it’s appropriate to be uncertain.

You may have a sense for what you want to do when you leave school, but right now it seems a little fuzzy as to how it will work out. The most important thing that school teaches you is learning to learn. Stay curious and remember there is a lot to learn outside of school so stay open to new experiences.

Do something you love, or at least like. This way you will be able to put your heart into, and whether you wind up making a lot of money or not, you will have enjoyed and taken pride in your work, and no one will ever be able to take that away from you.

Remember humor makes all things bearable, so keep laughing; especially at yourself. When people are laughing, they’re generally not killing one another. And along that note, here’s an adjustment I’ve made to the Golden Rule: Be fair with others but then keep after them until they’re fair with you.

I hope you’ll learn to make distinctions. A peach is not its fuzz, a toad is not its warts, a person is not his or her crankiness. If we can make distinctions, we can be tolerant, and we can get to the heart of our problems instead of wrestling endlessly with their gross exteriors. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in. If you challenge your assumptions, you won’t be so quick to accept the unchallenged assumptions of others. You’ll be a lot less likely to be caught up in bias or prejudice or be influenced by people who ask you to hand over your brains, your soul or your money because they have everything all figured out for you.

I’ve learned that it’s always better to be wise than to be smart. It takes a long, long time to find wisdom because nobody knows where wisdom can be found. It tends to break out at unexpected times like a rare virus and mostly people with compassion and understanding are susceptible to it.

We each create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it’s as though you aren’t there. Live and make choices according to your values. Be yourself in all things.

Don’t aim your doubt at yourself. Whenever you wonder about yourself, look up at the stars swirling around and realize how tiny and puny they are. They’re supposed to be gigantic explosions and they’re just these insignificant little dots. If you step back from things far enough you realize how important and powerful you are. Be bold. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory. Be brave enough to live life creatively. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but it is still a copy of something. Be the original. Be prepared to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing, but what you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself. And you will always have that.

Oh, and don’t forget, the baton is now yours…

This portion of my desert backpacking and rock-climbing trip was called a “solo”: A day and night alone where we each had to set up our camp, left alone with a tarp (sun and/or rain protection), gorp, water we had collected and disinfected earlier from a tinaja (basin-shaped water hole), and a sleeping bag.

After two hours of frantic tarp setup in a race to beat the sun—in the desert, when the sun goes down it’s fast and with a consuming darkness that makes your headlamp feel about as effective as cooking a steak with a match—I tended to the scratches from Ocotillo plants, and crawled into my sleeping bag.

As a fiery-red twilight slithered into the darkening canyon below, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was nice to be alone for the first time in days; but then I missed my camp-mates who I followed, cursing, up slick canyon walls and through flat, beach-like washes.

This group of women, who I’d only met a few days before, convinced me not to quit after I slid face first down an embankment, pinned to the sand by my 60-pound backpack. They convinced me I would never know what I had missed if I gave up and went home to what I thought of as comfort, instead of riding it out.  I was okay with quitting and not knowing, and getting back to my ‘comfortable’ life (of having no job after leaving a bad job, thinking about moving (again), feeling confused about starting a family). I also was more afraid of leaving the desert by myself—as I would have to hike back a few miles and wait by the road for the van to take me back to Marfa—than forging on with this group of strangers.

I tried to console my loneliness of the “solo” night by recalling the high points of the trip so far. Nothing came to mind. It was all heat and fear and thirst. While I exhausted myself with thinking, the gash cut into my palms from rock climbing throbbed angrily.

It was the first day—before my dramatic fall—when I climbed my first rock over the Rio Grande River. As I stepped over that Texas rock, with Mexico on the other side, I was paralyzed by what I was really doing. It seemed ridiculously dangerous, and so I tried to hold my position: a human tripod with legs splayed outwards to anchor myself, nylon-webbed rigging forming a diaper around my legs and waist, a rope linked through a carabineer, and my belaying partner on the rock-side above, anchoring me to herself and the pinned rope behind her waist. I did finally and slowly make it down (we rappelled first then climbed back up). It was the shortest of the three climbs, but I almost expected a medal at the top; instead, I was greeted with “Ready for the next one?” by the instructor.

The next rock was more steep and I wanted to get the rappelling over with so I slid down too quickly, not giving the rope slack, and discovered the true meaning of a rope burn. My hands were gummy from the blood and blisters so I tried to rely on my strong legs; but, with the only available place to slip my feet into being a crevasse about as wide as a deck of cards, I started to lose confidence. I did not want to be beat out by my other campers—two of whom climbed the first rock blindfolded—so I trudged on hoping bravado would make up for lack of opportunity and experience. I managed to maneuver about halfway up and then I was stuck. Not a single place to put my hand or foot was within even reasonable reach. I called up to my belaying partner. She replied with either, “You can do it!” or “You’re screwed!” (too far away to be sure), and so I decided to stay put. A solution or help would come, I figured. Someone or something always had—there was always a parent, boyfriend or teacher to fix things or tell me what to do.

As I clung to sheer rock face with a desert sun bleaching my back, I didn’t even hear a canyon wren chirp. It was as if the universe had left me on my own. I reassessed every piece of the rock within reach. There wasn’t a hint of a ledge wider than my thumbnail.

There was a thin crevasse, diagonally about a foot away from my extended arm. This would require letting go of my lousy but existing hold and almost leaping to this uncertain one. Sweat tickled its way in ribbons down my legs. I pressed my face against the rock for coolness. My forearms quivered from holding on too long, and my fingertips were seizing from the tight grasp.

It was pretty clear: slide down and climb up again; or go for the scary sliver of a gap beyond my reach. I looked down at the Rio Grande, up at the brilliant blue sky.

I let go and thrust forward, and managed to squeeze my feet into that slick crack with a luxurious four-inch overhang for my weary fingers above it. I learned my lesson from trying to hang on too long, and did not stop to admire my success. I scrambled up the rest of the rock, picking precarious holds and openings that previously looked as sturdy as communion wafers, but now felt as wide and sturdy as a NYC concrete block. When I made it to the top I did not expect a medal, I told the instructor this was my last climb of the day, and never looked back at the Rio Grande.

The morning of my solo, after accepting a night of being lonely and scared (and allowing myself to just stay in my sleeping bag and do nothing about how I felt), I woke to a half-dozen fat bees swarming about my head, the sun burning through morning clouds. One of our “assignments” for our solo was to select a rock from near our campsite to carry for the rest of our trip (discouraging anything large and heavy). I shook off the bees—who, aside from the canyon wrens, vultures circling every few days, and some small squiggly things I collected with my water from the tinajas (and hoped the iodine tablets would mercifully kill), were some of the few wildlife we had seen in days—and set off to find my special rock. Humming a little Rimsky-Korsakov, I found a rock that was caked with desert silt with a swirl of pink translucence.

On our last day, after a climb up a winding, narrow cliff that afforded no mistaken foot falls, and a trek down shale that crumbled beneath our boots, our team leaders timed each of us so that we could walk the last part of the trail in relative solitude (or at least out of eyesight of one another). It was our time to each say goodbye to the desert, and more specifically to drop our rocks on the way out.

I expected to be thrilled to be done with the desert. Instead, I felt unprepared to return to the life I craved and cried for on that first night when everything was so unfamiliar. I came to love what the desert was shaping me into: someone comfortable with the unknown, not being in control. I did not want to let “my” rock go. I was afraid that without it, I would forget what I had seen and learned—like losing vacation photos. The rock eventually slipped from my wounded hand as I remembered that every improvement I made on the trip—up the rock, over the hill, beyond my fears—came only when I let something go.

It was the smoking lounge of Polytechnic University in Brooklyn where I heard the best pick-up line ever: “You know no one ever learned how to be a technical writer by reading a book.”

I know, makes the knees weak, doesn’t it?

I guess you had to be there, twenty years ago when I sat on one of those rough-worn sofas, warily eying my soda can, reading, “How To Write a Computer Manual: A Handbook of Software Documentation” by Jonathan Price. I had just transferred to the college from a journalism program in hopes of getting serious about my education and future. It turns out that it was serious because that day my future husband walked in to that lounge; and, even though we were both involved with others at the time, we have been together—as friends, dating, business partners, and man and wife—ever since.

Our 18^th wedding anniversary is days away and I always become reflective about how quickly the years have passed and where our lives have taken us or where we will go from here.

But mostly I get nostalgic and remember how my husband still appears to me like that confident young man with thick, wavy hair, amber-flecked brown eyes, and dimpled chin who walked into the lounge with his khaki pants, yellow button-down shirt, and tan loafers. And our first “date” where I let him talk for at least 15 minutes before pointing out he had pizza sauce on his forehead because he looked so cute with it I didn’t want him to remove it too soon. Or the day he was showing off in front of the multitudes of male engineering students flitting about me (one of thirty female students) by setting the lounge wall on fire with his brass Zippo^© lighter. And I look to our recent years filled with pain of losing parents and friends, cancer scares and miscarriages, and joy of driving the entire California coast or snorkeling for the first time together.

I wear the years I have shared with my spouse like a badge of pride, mostly because I am proud of the work we have done to make the marriage work, and also because of the extremely high divorce rate. But what if a fifty-percent success rate at marriage is good? I mean, if you were in Las Vegas, you would take those odds. And, given how long people are living, the general stress and pressure that comes with modern life, and how big the population has become (my theory being that the more of something there is the more of something different you want, like the feeling you get wandering the soap aisle of your supermarket), a fifty-fifty chance that you will stay married isn’t a bad thing.

I think that marriage is the easiest hard work I have ever done. Marriage is hard work period. Anyone who tells you different (or doesn’t tell you how hard it is) is probably not doing much to make theirs a happy marriage.

You see, Julian, my husband makes it easy because he is my best friend. We were friends before anything else, and that adds a dimension to the relationship that might be missing in some marriages. Think about it: You can put up with a lot from a friend and never think of divorcing a friend. Though you may have some you have broken off with or drifted apart from over the years.

I am also lucky because Julian has an amazing attitude towards women: He believes we can do anything. So he empowers me to try anything I can imagine, shows up and pulls through for all the tough stuff to help me make it happen, encourages me to stick with things that are in my best interest not his or ours, suffers many a tear-soaked shirt when I fail, and knows how to wait just the right amount of time before nudging me in the direction of a new course.

Aside from support, my marriage is graced with respect. Julian appears to be my number one fan by the way I have heard him (and have other people tell me he does this when I am not around), boast about me and my accomplishments.

Sometimes I get nervous about this fortunate marriage, and wonder “Why Us?” And I think to others I know who do have good and happy marriages, and it seems we have a lot of the following rules and actions in place:

• Treat each other with respect: If I didn’t think my spouse was competent, resourceful and a valuable member of society, I would not have married him. So why don’t people realize how badly it reflects on them to belittle and speak badly about their spouse?
• Share things openly without agenda: If I want or need something I tell him. If I have screwed something up, I tell him. If I am disappointed or disagree with something he has done, I tell him. Manipulation is a passive form of control, and I simply do not feel out of control in our marriage so I have no need to manipulate.
• Trust each other completely: I could not live a moment in a marriage where there was not complete trust over everything we share—money, sex, food, fears, hates, likes, everything.
• Never keep score: I do not care who has taken the trash out more or emptied the dishwasher. We believe this is a partnership. We share a life and a home and all the nonsense that comes with life and work and home. Things are fifty-fifty most of the time; but, we have an understanding that there will be times when one of us will pull the weight a little be more.
• Talk and talk and talk some more: This seems to help all the above-mentioned problems. Tell your spouse what you want and need and what is wrong and why and how to help. Tell them again if they don’t get it the first time. Draw pictures if necessary. If your spouse still doesn’t get it, then get help. Find a neutral person in front of who the two of you can talk. This should be someone who knows you both (not the wife’s physical trainer nor the husband’s softball buddy) like a good, old friend or older relative. This should be someone who can translate what you are both needed to say but maybe just can hear it or say it.
• Never give up: I have seen people stick through horrendous things at a job, with their siblings or other blood relations, and in a casual sports game; but, when it comes to their marriage they don’t apply the same tenacity. A marriage isn’t a relationship that exists in addition to your family and friends, it should be the main relationship supported by your family and friends. I always half-joke with Julian that only one of us is going to make it out of this marriage!

Do we have fights and troubles? Whenever they are necessary and with an unspoken understanding of the following:

• We never fight in public (it’s gross for everyone involved)

• We fight fair, which means:

(a) No calling each other bad names (they stick like wet noodles to a wall and you will find yourself bringing them up when they really should fade away forever, so don’t even get started).

(b) No screaming (I am working on this!); voices will be raised but screaming just means we are frustrated and should probably regroup or things will get ugly.

(c) No physical outbursts (well, to be honest, we have found that cell phones do not survive a trip across the room into a wall, one gains enough strength to tear a Vanity Fair magazine in half when provoked properly, and you can hurt your hand punching a pillow; but we have never struck out or thrown anything at one another).

(d) No bringing up the past (I am working on this!); if it happened and it is done then treat it like a snake and do not poke a stick at it again.

• We remember that we want to stay married: A sure fire way to end a fight is to ask yourself whether you want to be right or if you want to be happy.

Julian has taught me unconditional love. He has been a patient husband through many of my tribulations and has never criticized, nor caused me to fear he would break off the marriage, because I had gained forty pounds (and thankfully never brought it up when I lost the weight) or quit jobs after three days or have been fraught with a multitude of chronic illnesses that have ruined vacations and kept us up at night.

My favorite example of this took place on one trip to Aruba. We watched a very happy couple stroll to the shore. When they reached the water’s edge, she sat down and removed her prosthetic leg. He picker her up in a honeymooners-across-the-threshold fashion and carried her into the water where he supported her as they swam and laughed and kissed.

Julian turned to me and said, “I love you like that, and wouldn’t care how sick you ever got or how bad things ever got. I would still love you.” And he has. And he has made it easier to grow older because we will are doing it together (and hopefully will continue to for a very long time).

Eighteen years? Piece of cake when you spend it with your best friend.

First, I think women are fabulous. I also think that while women spend time sending out emails to their friends with titles like, “Is Your Husband Dumber Than a Potato?”, and laugh at the guy on TV who couldn’t find his socks (on his feet) without his wife’s help, many women do not live lives that honor their fabulousness.

Women have made huge strides in sports. Some manage (Jean Afterman, vice president and assistant general manager of the 2009 World Champion New York Yankees); some communicate (Roxanne Jones, vice president, ESPN Publishing) and some dominate (Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Billie Jean King, Mia Hamm, Ann Meyers, to name a few, see here for more).

The Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 held any school and college receiving federal money accountable for providing equal opportunities for girls to participate in sports as they did boys. Recent studies are backing up a theory that girls playing more sports would develop confidence and many of the other skills imparted by participating in sports and as part of a team with tangible proof: women who had participated in sports as girls had a 20% increase in higher education, and a 40% increase in rise in employment, and a 7% decline in obesity (if you aren’t impressed, remember that no other public health initiative has even come close to results like this).

We’ve still got a long way to go as far as pay and exposure. Consider this:

• In 2009, women playing in the WNBA could earn anywhere from $35,190 to $99,500, with a team salary cap of $803,000 while men in the NBA were earning $442,114 to $13,758,000, (with a team salary cap of $58.680 million). (WNBA Collective Bargaining Agreement; Coon, Larry; “NBA Salary Cap/Collective Bargaining Agreement FAQ.”)
• ESPN’s SportsCenter (1999 and 2004) devotes only two percent of its air time to women’s sports. (Messner, M.A., Duncan, M. C. & Willms. N. (2006). “This revolution is not being televised.” Contexts.)
• A survey of 285 newspapers found that nearly 25% of editors agreed with the statement “Women are naturally less athletic than are men;” and nearly half of the editors said that Title IX impaired men’s sports. (Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly cited in “Research Finds Lack of Women’s Coverage,” June 1, 2005.)

The amazing thing about women is our drive to accomplish even without promise of equal, or any, reward or recognition. Like these women you may have never heard of:

• Doctor Helen Brooke Taussig is known as the founder of pediatric cardiology for her innovative work on “blue baby” syndrome. In 1944, Taussig and colleagues developed an operation to correct the congenital heart defect that causes the syndrome. This operation is considered a key step in the development of adult open heart surgery.
• As an aerospace engineer for 36 years at Rockwell International Space Division, Barbara Crawford Johnson was involved in flight dynamics studies, lunar reentry vehicle research, and developing of one of the country’s first missile efforts. In 1968, on the Apollo Program, Johnson held the highest post ever by a woman in her division as Manager of Mission Requirements and Evaluation. She received a medallion in 1973 from NASA in recognition of role she played in the Apollo 11 mission, mankind’s first successful attempt to land on the moon.
• Writer and Editor Ida Tarbell’s exposé of the Standard Oil Trust in the 1904 publication, “The History of the Standard Oil Company” prompted the federal government to prosecute and break up Standard Oil for anti-trust violations. She founded the American Magazine, authored several biographies, and, in spite of her 1912 anti-feminist book, “The Business of Being a Women, remains a role model for women and men in journalism.

So with all these wonderful women, why do I sometimes feel disappointed in my own sex? I believe that women are becoming more complacent over the little things that honor our place in society, like demanding that paychecks for the same job have the same number of digits in them, or keeping reproductive rights a women’s-only issue at least presenting a united front to the world.

I would like for more women to stand together on common issues. Like working mothers and stay-at-home mothers supporting each other. They share the same problems and fears: Lack of sleep, lack of time, lack of money, whether they are doing the best by their children. This divide is very clear in Switzerland where working mothers are called “Raven Mothers” (ravens are notoriously neglectful of their young). Of course this is a country where women have only been able to vote in national elections since 1971, women equality did not become a constitutional right until 1981 and a “Federal statutory maternity leave of 14 weeks at 80 percent salary was implemented only in 2005”.

And the United States has a disparaging record on women’s health insurance. Before the health care reform, many women were denied coverage if they had “had a prior Caesarean section or been victims of domestic violence.” Several healthcare provider companies expressed concern that Caesareans or beatings were “pre-existing conditions that were likely to be predictors of higher expenses in the future,” and in their rejection letters to these women, informed them that they would have been eligible had they been sterilized. (The New York Times, March 30, 2010)

And finally, I would like women to be more truthful with one another about things that matter, like how hard motherhood really is, that marriage is more about the partnership than the size of your engagement ring, and that if you have one decent, honest woman friend in your life then you are blessed.

Basal cell carcinoma is one of several types of non-melanoma skin cancers, which are the most common forms of skin cancer in the United States.  According to a study in the “Archives of Dermatology”, as of 2006, there have been 3.5 million cases a year in 2 million American people.

Pick the First One

When I received my diagnosis, my dermatologist (and the office manager and secretary) went out of their way to reassure me that the type of carcinoma I had was not bad, easy to treat, and not to worry. So I spent hours pouring over internet articles until I felt that, should the need arise, I could diagnose and remove several moles; at least I learned about three groupings of skin cancers, which include:

• Basal cell carcinoma is a non-melanoma type that develops in the lowest layer of the epidermis (the top-most level of your skin), can be raised or flat, look pink or red, and have a pearl-like sheen. These pop up in areas that get the most sun exposure, like your head and neck. Basal cell carcinoma grows slowly and is not likely to spread to the lymphatic system or other remote body parts; though it can spread to the bone and nearby tissue if left untreated for a long time.

• Squamous cell carcinoma is a nonmelanoma type that affects the flat, scale-like cells that are higher up in the epidermis. This type is most common in the sun-exposed body part—the head, neck, eyelids, ears—just like basal cell carcinoma. Unlike basal cell carcinoma, this type of cancer can spread to other parts of the body.

• Melanoma refers to a skin tumor that can be benign like a mole or a life-threatening malignant tumor. It forms in the pigment-making cells in the lower epidermis and can spread anywhere on the body. Melanoma is far more serious than the basal cell carcinoma I was diagnosed with, and I would not detract from it by discussing it here without neither having (very gratefully) never experienced it nor conducted significant research to write about it. You can read more at the American Cancer Society website.

Why Me?

It is posited that all this non melanoma skin cancer is due to an increase of people joining our “leisure society”—all our technology has gotten us out of the office and kitchen and onto beach, or tanning salon. While skin cancers used to be most prevalent in the fifty-and-over group, more people under 40 are being diagnosed at this time. However, these things take time. It is likely that the cancer I was diagnosed got its start a couple of decades ago.

At 14 I was Shapash (the Phoenician sun goddess), and would have donned tin foil to achieve a deeper and darker skin had it not taken up so much space in my beach tote. Now I own sunscreen with numbers higher than 50, wear rash guards at the beach, and possess an array of 1950′s-style wide-brimmed hats.

I am someone who takes just about everything personally, and was very angry about my skin cancer until I learned that there are many factors that can put anyone at risk such as being fair skinned, spending lots of time in the sun, UV exposure from tanning booths, and radiation (in treating other forms of cancer).

Fix It But Don’t Forget It

I started getting my “beauty marks” examined in my mid thirties—around the time when they stopped being ‘cute freckles’ and started to appear more dark in color and appear in more unusual places, like the bottom of my feet. I learned the term mole when I had one removed and examines a couple of years ago and when the results came back normal, I assumed all mole removals would go that way: One less mark on my skin, a week of a red mark from the laser and back to my life.

That’s why when I got the message from my dermatologist’s office, while on a tennis vacation in Sarasota, Florida (yes, I see the irony), I mad a note to call back when I got home and did not give it another thought.

When my dermatologist told me the results of the biopsy, I wanted it taken out of my body right then and there, and was willing to help her do it.

I was given an appointment for MOHS surgery, an in-office procedure, for the following month. Other treatments include curettage and desiccation, radiation, Cryosurgery, and creams that attack cancer cells or improve immune cell growth.

MOHS micrographic surgery is the most effective treatment (a 98% cure rate), where the surgeon carefully removes a small piece of the tumor and examines it under a microscope and then painstakingly repeats this (cutting and microscopic examination) until all of the basal cell carcinoma is accurately located and removed. This eliminates the guess work about how far and wide to extract cells, ensuring that very little of the healthy tissue will be removed and scarring is minimal.

My husband went with me the day of the surgery, not only for moral support, but also because I am notorious at “skipping out” on important things that scare me or that I do not like to do. My surgeon, a lovely, petite Asian woman around my age, explained everything that was going to happen and then numbed the left area of my chest. She then drew a circle around the area with a marker and began dig and root around in the area on top of my breast. At least it felt like digging. My chest was truly numb but the surrounding area interpreted her movements like a gardener taking a trowel to dry soil. I couldn’t really see what she was going, mostly due to the dentist-office-like light glaring towards my chin; but really, would you want to look?

She then covered it up with surgical bandage and tape and told me take a walk and grab a coffee with my husband while she examined it, and then would know if she would need to remove more. It was a beautifully sunny and warm September morning, and we strolled around Bay Ridge Brooklyn chatting about the small things in life and in a marriage that make avoiding the bigger things wonderful:  We should get the oil changed in the car soon, how much nicer the laundry smelled now that we switched detergents, how beautiful some of the gardens were that we passed and I really want to plant more on our balcony this Spring.

When we returned, I was told she had to remove a little more and then I was done. We went back to the office, she completed her work, sewed me up and sent me home with some basic instructions like keeping the area dry and wear a sports bra 24 by 7 for a few weeks to help prevent scarring (her theory being the weight of my breast would drag the chest tissue down). I am a good patient and have healed nicely, though I was convinced something was wrong when months afterward I could still feel a twinge in the area and my body reject the soluble stitches.
Basal cell carcinomas like to make return appearances, often in the same place. Statistics show that as many as half the people diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma can expect another occurrence somewhere else on their skin within five years.

I no longer lie at the beach pretending to achieve a golden hue (I always went from shades of lobster to medium rare and right back to pale anyway). I still play tennis obsessively, and snorkel at any opportunity given. I also don all the creams and clothes necessary to make sure that I can do both of these activities for as long as possible and do them with as much of my skin in tact.

image courtesy: Julie Bourbeau (AK, USA), Sun Goddess

In her book, “Medicine in Translation: Journeys with My Patients”, Ofri outlines experiences at Bellevue, focusing on treatment dilemmas, which may be common to any large, urban medical center; but, which are unique in that her patients are often refugees (her roster reads like an international smorgasbord: West Africa, Dominican Republic, Australia, Bangladesh, Guatemala) and many are participants in the Survivors of Torture (SOT) program.

Ofri’s internal dialog shows her relating to her patients on many levels: she wonders how they feel about their situation (do they really comprehend the implications of their medical situation, or is it lost in translation?), what their lives outside of her office are like (being in a strange country where you cannot communicate or may be completely alone), and fantasizes—through their food, and clothing, and mannerisms—about their cultural pasts in an effort to connect with them on the exam table.

Although her patients deal with complex and dreadful human conditions, Ofri relates their stories in a dignifying way. You feel no shame in reading their tragedies, and are drawn in to deal with her dilemmas, from the medical (whether to re-dispense oxycodone to a Polish immigrant who may truly be suffering from a terrible accident, and has the misfortune of having the medication stolen during his time in New York City’s shelter system, or is simply a drug addict selling on the street), to the philosophical (the subtle differences between the words ‘disease’ and ‘illness’), and the social (how to make patients feel comfortable about discussing torture and disfigurement, from acid and machetes, in Braazaville).

Several chapters share Ofri’s transition and time in Costa Rica with her family, when she took a year off from work to submerse herself in the culture in hopes of really “getting” the language. She truly captures that feeling of anyone who has ever dreamed of living in another country that offers a slower, kinder, more natural and more affordable way of life. There are only a few chapters on her time in Costa Rica, and hopefully there will be more on this in another book.

However difficult the subject matter, the recurring theme is that hope and compassion have a healing quality that transcends language. The patients with positive attitudes and optimistic outlooks fair best, if not medically so, then at least as human beings in a foreign land, which Ofri manages to show is what we all basically are.

My contention is not with Mr. Taub’s suggestions, or that many of these ideas have been posted before in one form or other on multiple sites by the users who discovered how brief the lifespan would actually be for their “smart phone”.

Anyone who has added more than one application (and I am someone who spent more time downloading apps than using them) or tried to utilize many of the other hip and cool features lauded by Apple (and I would go so far as to say these features—surfing the web;  access to thousands of cool apps; pop-up notifications of mail, texts, and calendar events;  access to a 3G network — were proposed as the raison d’être of the iPhone; or basically why it is so cool you have to have it more than any other “phone”) would discover its shortcoming immediately. I discovered this too; but, my opinion was clouded by my love of the countless apps that distracted me during my commute, kept nonsensical but cute texts between my husband and myself going all day, and the fact that I felt so darned cool taking out my iPhone at every opportunity to show that I was not the self-proclaimed Luddite I truly am.

I propose that the following suggestions for extending a Smartphone’s battery life come at too high a cost:

Stay in the Dark: The first tip is to dim your screen. Why don’t I just make it all black & white and eliminate any sense of eye candy, which is primarily one of the advantages of having that large, flat, glossy touch screen. What’s next? Mothers telling there kids to read in the dark because the electric bill is too high?

The Internet Nazi: Tip number two is “No internet for you!” Your silly, battery-wasting wifi explorations will cause your battery to go from 100% to about 30% in twenty minutes. Now that’s what I call fast performance.

Remember the “i”, forget the “phone”: The third tip is to essential not use the Phone part of your iPhone. On average, my iPhone dropped one out of three calls most of which were from my iPhone in my apartment to my husband’s iPhone at work, four blocks away. It is advised that you should know when you are going to be roaming or out-of-network and put your phone in airplane mode. Great, then when I am on the ferry back to New Jersey I will put it into dolphin mode.

Be late for that meeting: Tip number four is to turn off all notifications. If you got the iPhone for more than using the FaceBook^© app at work, you may enjoy being notified of upcoming events from your Calendar or items from your To Do applications or when new mail has arrived. All this pushing drains you battery faster than a vampire at a blood drive, so turn it off and learn to lead a more bohemian lifestyle.

If I sound like a hypocrite, an iPhone patron whining about my problems, well I am not.  My husband and I sold our iPhones to a place called Gazelle, where we were well compensated and know that the phones will be put to good use. We dropped AT&T and went back to Verizon, and got “regular” phones (is the opposite of a smart phone a “dumb phone”?).

Why would two people living in the twenty-first century do such a thing? Here’s some thoughts, see if they apply to you:

• Pain in the neck: I became one of those people who spent most of their time looking down at a small screen when the world (and busy Manhattan traffic) was happening around me. No wonder no one is “meeting anyone” they’re all too busy looking at their iPhone screens.

• Pain in the wallet: When you add up the cost of the phone, the data plan, which you can not opt out of or alter, and the unbelievable amount of applications you will download, you do not own the iPhone as much as you do “pay it down” over time.

• Pain in the tginbs: The touch screen on the iPhone may be a pretty thing to look at, but it is also a known enemy of the human thumb. I found it more difficult to adapt to than say the smaller keyboard on other smart phones I have sampled from friends (e.g., Blackberry^©), and the typos, while humorous at first, becoming increasingly frustrating over time. One would think this “smart” “phone” would learn how you type, like many speech recognition programs, and adjust for your clumsy thumbs accordingly.

I am not out to dissuade anyone from buying or using an iPhone (or any other Smartphone). I think they have revolutionized the technology in general, but for the most part have become expensive accessories that fail to live up to the necessities of a cell phone (clarity, no dropped calls, comfortable to hold) nor a PDA’s requirements (simple, useful applications that accomplish many things at once rather than a thousand apps that sort of so a little bit of what you would like but not much of anything, email that is delivered over a reliable network without rendering your device DOA, screen and keyboard entry that takes people into account, and not how cool the device will look on a television ad).

photo from Gizmodo

It seemed extremely unjust that I should have to go to school the following day, and even more cruel was that my school uniform did not burn. Due to my grandmother’s diligent ironing it waited smugly for me in the kitchen with the other pressed clothes. My Catholic school teachers were unusually sympathetic, and I was given extra time at recess to tell my tale of woe to schoolmates.

I did not really understand what it meant that my grandparents lived on a ‘fixed income’ wihile I was growing up. I knew we ate cheese that came in five-pound rectangular cardboard box, brought coupons to eat out at the fish ‘n chips chain, and shopped for furniture and home goods at Alexander’s department store basement, and that my grandfather also brought home things he would find and clean on his rounds at the Department of Sanitation. But I never longed for anything. At least not until I lost all my clothes.

The kindness of strangers was abundant and embarrassing.The single mother next door donated old clothes from her daughter who was four years older and two sizes bigger than me. It was made clear to me that while rolling up pants and becoming crafty with duct tape was a fashion challenge, it would be something just short of sin to turn away clothes from people living on Welfare.  It was only a few weeks before family pitched in for a shopping trip that placed me in basic, necessary items like underwear that didn’t require safety pins and jeans that didn’t have a “Disco Sucks” patch on the back pocket.

There had been a lapse in the home insurance policy and while repairs weren’t too extensive–unless you mind having a hole in your bedroom wall–they were costly and would take time. So, for a couple of months afterwords, I lived with relatives, and even got to stay over friends’ homes on the weekends.

While my room was being mended and my clothes and schoolwork catching up to post-trauma time, I wrestled many nights on my relative’s couches and beds with a  reoccurring dream:  Someone would rush into wherever I was (restaurant, school, home), and notify me of an impending disaster (flood, earthquake, volcano eruption) and that I had 10 minutes to gather my stuff out of my home before it was destroyed. Was scared me in my dreams was not my home being destroyed, but that I had only 10 minutes to choose what I valued most, the rest would be gone forever. In each dream, I rushed through my room, evaluating as quickly as I could what mattered most to me. Time almost always ran out–the tide gushed at the front door, the molten lava poured around the Welcome mat–and I never felt that I got everything I wanted. I always chose something unnecessary like my watch with two plastic-figured kids on a see-saw rocking back and forth as the seconds ticked away, while leaving something precious like my dog behind. Oddly enough, as the dreams progressed, I got better at choosing and once I finally felt comfortable with my decisions (it seems to me now, though at the time felt like coincidence) the dreams faded away.

There are moments in my present life (usually when panicked or stressed, or when I must embark on to something new or deal with some change), when I revert to a mental-quick-list game of what I need to have should disaster find me. It comforts me to know that I know what is important, and should the need arise, I would know exactly what to grab: my husband (though I believe we’d be grabbing each other mutually!), my cat (squirm as she will), and my wallet (have you ever had to cancel your credit cards and get a new license?). I was surprised by what I would not take: No photos, laptops, nor jewelry; and, not even the turtle-shaped travel alarm clock, which, now that my grandparents are gone, reminds me of the trips we’d take together and how it was one of the few things my grandmother let me play with and never yelled about my being careful. My dictionary and bible would have to fend for themselves because while the first two that survived got lost in transit during a move, I’ve discovered that I am usually never at a loss for words and my faith is something that resides in my heart and–oddly enough for this writer–not in a book.